The Harm in Hate Speech

The Harm in Hate Speech Jeremy Waldron. Cambridge: Harvard, 2012. 292 pp. $26.95On February 28, 2013, demonstrators from the Westboro Baptist Church descended into New York's tranquil Hudson Valley to spread their singular message of hate. In West Point, at the funeral of General Norman Schwarzkopf, church members protested the military's decision of "letting fags openly taut [sic] their perversion in the military."1 Later that same day, upriver in Poughkeepsie, the same group picketed at Vassar College on the grounds that the elite school was a "filthy institution ... wholly given over to the fag agenda."2 Replete with homophobic slurs emblazoned across picket signs and outnumbered by the angered cries of counter-protestors, the Westboro Baptist trip through the mid-Hudson region was virtually indistinguishable from similar hate-filled events turned back by loud opposition. By day's end, church members were retreating back to Kansas and Vassar students had raised over $100,000 for the Trevor Project, an organization providing suicide prevention services for gay, lesbian, and transgendered teens (Staino, 2013).Just to the north, in Ottawa, Ontario, something quite different was transpiring as the Supreme Court of Canada issued a ruling in the matter of Saskatchewan v. Whatcott. Incensed by the Saskatoon Public School Board's decision to promote a "less homophobic environment for students" (Sodomites & lesbians, 2001 ). William Whatcott took to distributing anti-LGBT pamphlets claiming, among other things, that "[o]ur children will pay the price in disease, death, abuse and ultimately eternal judgement [sic] if we do not say no to the sodomite desire to socialize your children into accepting something that is clearly wrong" (Saskatchewan v. Whatcott, 2012). On February 27, just as Westboro Baptist vans were caravanning through the Catskills some 350 miles away, the Ottawa court upheld in part the right of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission to levy punitive fines of $17,500 (CAD) against Whatcott, arguing that "the protection of vulnerable groups from the harmful effect emanating from hate speech is of such importance as to justify the minimal infringement of expression."Neither William Whatcott nor the members of the Westboro Baptist Church are shy about their desires to vilify non-heterosexual relationships. Indeed, their respective pamphlets and placards are largely interchangeable. Yet while the money raised for the Trevor Project was certainly impressive, the Hudson Valley protests and counter-protests themselves were largely unremarkable and scarcely covered in the American media. Whatcott's case, on the other hand, was a cause celebre in Canada and a ringing victory for hate speech legislation. How is it that these two countries-so similar in cultural, political, and moral outlook-can differ so radically on hate speech?It is precisely this problem that motivates Jeremy Waldron's Harm in Hate Speech: Why is it that the United States is alone among Western, liberal democracies in tolerating hate speech? By and large, Western, liberal democracies have embraced the moral and legal necessity of hate speech legislation. Across Europe, as well as in many former European colonies, laws have been enacted to prohibit public speech that incites hatred, intimidates, or otherwise threatens or insults groups or individuals on the basis of race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religion, or other traits. Yet, not only has the United States avoided implementing similar legislation, but most hate speech has been classed as constitutionally protected. Indeed, outside of "the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words" (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942), public speech in the United States is both unregulated and constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. To Waldron, the uniquely American tolerance of hate speech is both a moral and a political failing and The Harm in Hate Speech is his attempt at providing a sustained argument to the effect that laws prohibiting hate speech are not just beneficial but are vital to a well-functioning society. …